Cubs Clubhouse Meltdown In Full Swing
Maybe you haven’t heard or been paying attention, but apparently this professional baseball team has been playing games on the North Side of Chicago since April. I haven’t heard much about it, but after doing some research, it appears these North Side “Cubs” have accumulated a 27-33 record and stand at 3rd place in a weak NL Central despite having one of the highest payrolls in baseball. Reliable staples of the Cubs lineup like Derek Lee and Aramis Ramirez are hitting .234 and .168 respectively. On top of that, Cubs “Ace” Carlos Zambrano has bounced from the rotation to the pen and back to the rotation without much success in either role.
Fear not Cubs faithful! Even with the team underperforming, the leadership of Lou Piniella will help keep the clubhouse a positive place leading to a turnaround for our beloved Cubbies. Just kidding, things are worse than ever in the clubhouse. According to a source from Bleed Cubbie Blue, things are worse than ever:
I have a contact with access to the Cubs clubhouse. He said the clubhouse is a disaster right now (maybe this game will help). He said the latin players, led by Ramirez and Z, have completely walled themselves off from everyone else, to the point that they wouldn’t let them team haze Castro in the typical rookie fashion (carrying bags, etc). He said Ramirez has completely shut down, refuses to practice, and is barely willing to take the field for games. The team never turned on Soriano, despite all his struggles, because he worked his butt off, but the team is turning on Ramirez, because he doesn’t, and doesn’t see a problem with it.
I’m not sure how reliable this is, but it doesn’t surprise me and seems plausible. Ramirez has never seemed to really care all that much, sitting out games with extremely minor injuries and not running out pop-ups or groundballs. As a numbers guy I always lean towards taking the player with the better stats than the “clubhouse guy”, but this situation has to be impacting the players on the field.
Hey Lou, where you at? Isn’t this whole thing supposed to be your department? Lord knows you’re getting paid enough to at least try to fix it.
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